Additive Manufacturing (AM)—also known as 3D printing—refers to a variety of manufacturing processes where a part is built by adding material to a smaller base versus traditional subtractive manufacturing whereby material is removed, machined, from a larger stock. In powder bed additive manufacturing a heat source melts layer by layer the powder, in direct metal deposition the material is added, commonly as a solid or powder, to a melt pool created by a heat source. AM parts are first described as 3D CAD models to which the manufacturing instructions must be added and then all the data is converted into a job file which is used to drive the AM machine.
Building a part by AM processes may take anywhere from several hours to several days—depending on the AM method used and the size and complexity of the model. Accordingly, the processing time is still extremely long and laborious leaving room for much inefficiency.